How a DIY Network Plans To Subvert Time Warner Cable's NYC Internet Monopoly (vice.com)

Jason Koebler writes: Toppling a telecom monopoly is the dream of many Americans, but the folks at NYC Mesh are actually doing something about it. On any given weekend, Brian Hall and his fellow organizers can be found around the city, installing directional Wi-Fi routers on rooftops. Anyone in the city who lives near another person on the network is welcome to join, and NYC Mesh volunteers will help you install a rooftop router. The network is still small, but it has partnered with two internet exchanges to install "super nodes" that have a range of several miles and are connected directly to the backbone of the internet.

Comments

Re:Mesh who's the backbone?

[smelch]

They have two links to the backbone. The agreement you sign for that type of a hookup is not going to be the same as consumer internet access agreements. They are pretty explicitly creating an ISP. Every ISP is hooked up somewhere to the backbone as well, so you can't say "oh they hooked up to the backbone therefore they aren't allowed to provide internet services". That doesn't follow at all. The novelty of this is the network. They are installing wireless routers to create a mesh network that will facilitate communication inside the network and everything else goes in and out of the backbone hookup. This is different from the physical infrastructure required by running cables and setting up towers because presumably they are in unregulated EM spectrum with small devices for the regular nodes. It's easy for them to expand the network cheaply and don't have issues with getting approval from the municipal government.

Community Wireless Networks

[Badooleoo]

Air-Stream in South Australia have been doing this successfully for a long time and is one of the largest wireless community networks in the world.

http://air-stream.org/

Also WACAN in Western Australia is doing well.

http://www.wacan.asn.au/

Re:Last mile monopolies

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it amusingly ironic that the US, with its supposed "free enterprise" ethos typically ends up with a monopoly or near-monopoly in internet provision, where we in the UK, with a regulated telecomms market with a single near-monopoly carrier have a thriving market. Because we had a single carrier at one time, they are obliged to resell wholesale bandwidth to any qualifying operator - so, even out in the sticks I can choose from upwards of 40 providers, all of which rely on BT's infrastructure, and I don't have to buy from BT.

If you *do* buy from BT, there is a "Chinese wall" between BT wholesale and retail operations - the retail arm is just another customer of the wholesale arm.

(Why anyone *does* buy from BT escapes me- their call-centres are without clue).

Re:sounds good on paper

[geoskd]

In a mesh, more nodes = more paths.

It's also wireless, which means that more nodes = more total traffic one the limited bandwidth available. Doccis has the same limitation, but when you add a router to a congested wifi location, the congestion gets worse, not better. When you add routers to Doccis, the individual congestion clears up.

Mesh networks work reasonably well up to about 1000 - 2000 nodes per square mile. Above that, performance drops as a function of n*log(n). By the time you reach 10,000 nodes per square mile, performance on 802.11n drops to less average bandwidth than old school DSL. at 20,000 nodes per square mile, bandwidth has dropped to dialup speeds. New york city (including the boroughs) has over 25,000 residents per square mile. That means that the Mesh network cant handle more than 10% of the population before performance begins to drop under ideal conditions. Under real world conditions, It is likely to be half that, and will get worse over time as more and more bandwidth pollution is brought into service in the form of the IoT. The part that people don't understand about mesh networks, is that even with huge numbers of gateway routers, once more than a dozen nodes are within reach of each other, their traffic starts interfering with each other significantly due to multiple transmission collisions. Directional antennas help a little, but not nearly enough, especially when there are vastly more sources of wifi that are not part of the mesh that inject pockets of congestion and provide no services to the mesh (other peoples wifi routers who are time warner customers for example).

Mesh networks have their uses, but the operating envelope is a relatively narrow band of opportunity, which will not allow them to "take the city by storm".